Winning Business Lessons From Barack, Inc. – with Barry Libert
on Aug 25, 2009 - 7:17 AM PSTI want this site to occasionally bring you business ideas from successful people outside the business world. So I invited Barry Libert, author of Barack, Inc., to teach what he learned from studying Barack Obama’s winning campaign.
The FULL program
Video excerpts
About Barry Libert
Barry Libert is the author of Barack, Inc, and the Chairman and CEO of Mzinga, a provider of enterprise social media and learning solutions.
A few lessons from Barack, Inc.
Create a unified online platform
When businesses cobble together tools from multiple services, they often require users to register before each different tool — forums, chat, etc. In comparison, Obama’s web site was a hit because its unified platform only required users to register once.
Admit mistakes, publicly
I asked Barry what he thought United Airlines should do about Dave Carroll, the musician who wrote the web hit song, “United Breaks Guitars,” because of what the airline did to his $3,500 instrument. He suggested that United might want to sing an apology and post it online.
That’s in keeping with Barry’s observation that when Obama’s campaign labeled Hillary Clinton “(D-Punjab)” instead of “(D-New York)” — a snide reference to her support of India — Obama sat down his staffers and told them to end their cheap shots.
Get your supporters to promote you
Before Obama showed up to public events, his staffers asked the crowds at the events to get on their mobile phones and recruit friends to come to the event.
When you lose, evaluate
The Texas primary was a huge prize in the Democratic primary so the Obama campaign spent $20 million trying to capture it — only to lose to Hillary Clinton. “I’m not yelling at you guys,” he told his staffers. Instead, they evaluated their mistakes and discussed how to avoid them next time.
When you’re winning, stay focused
Obama raised $639 million, nearly twice McCain’s war chest of $335 million. The financial advantage was so overwhelming, that there was concern his campaign would get overconfident. So he sent out a warning to his people, invoking the surprise defeat by Clinton early in the primary, “For those of you who are feeling giddy or cocky or think this is all set, I have just two words for you: New Hampshire.”
Exude confidence
Before hiring Patrick Gaspard as his political director, Obama told him, “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna [sic] think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Full program includes
- Social media strategies that work in politics and will work in your business.
- A discussion about whether writing a book about a Democratic politician might turn off Barry’s Republican clients.
- A discussion about wether remaining calm in business might cause people to think you’re a wuss — and how to avoid looking weak by keeping your cool.
Suggested comments
- Why do you think Obama won the election?
- What lessons did you learn from the Obama campaign? What did you learn from the other candidates?
- How did the audio and video turn out on this one?
[Thank you Rosie Bernardo proof-reading this.]
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August 25th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Just testing the new comment system. Looks like it's working.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
“Prefer audio? Great! “Right click” here for the MP3 format.” link doesn't work for me. Tried it two times, and it says the page has been moved.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Barry must be the most whimsical marketing guy I've never ever heard of.
Just got his book, can't wait to read it.
And what flawless editing!
August 25th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Trying to download the mp3, but got audio not found, could you fix that? Thanks,
August 25th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Good catch. I fixed it thanks to you.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
- I'd love to hear what you think of the book.
- Glad to hear it about the editing. We had a hard time with the connection on this one.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Should be fixed now. Thanks for telling me.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Well where do I start. Politics? Paola? or People?
Honestly it was hard for me to watch this interview because of the praising of Barack. Out of respect for you I pushed myself and was thankful for hanging in there.
Politics — He may have won the campaign and be a “winner” for “Big” business and “Big” Control (Government) — but he's far from being a winner for the honor of America, “small” Businesses and the capitalist spirit.
Paola — awesome job!
People — I had a dream a few weeks back and the theme was ecosystems. So since I love looking up words I thought, “what does ecosystem really mean.”
To me I thought it was about the environment — animals and plants. What I found out is “eco” comes from the Greek word “oikos”. This was a powerful discovery for me personally because of my college churchy days — “okios” was a huge thing.
Okios was the word for family, tribes, those close to you. The way you determine your own okios is to answer one question. Add up all the time you spend with person X. If the time spent with person X is one hour or more then person X is in your Okios — they are in your “personal” life. Some married couples don't even spend 20 minutes a week with each other. Crazy! But true.
So social media networking can be thought of as an EcoSystem. A system were you can encourage, relate to, communicate with, share with, and enable your okios.
Some of Barry's ideas reminded me of this and so I'm sharing it with you.
Be well.
August 26th, 2009 at 8:35 am
Heya,
Thanks for putting together this interview. I'll watch your video later today and also just sent myself an email reminder to buy his book when I get home (I was looking for something else to order on Amazon so I could reach the amount to qualify for free shipping. lol).
I actually have involvement with the national election campaigns for one of the top politicians in my country, so “Barack Inc” will be a very interesting read for sure. :)
BTW, if you can find a good deal on getting your mp3s transcribed, I'd give you two more thumbs up! Having the option of vid and audio is great, but my preference, when given the choice – and I'm sure for others as well – is to absorb it in the written form.
Just a suggestion. Either way – thanks again.
August 26th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Hey Andrew. Another great interview and another great guest. The technical quality was excellent and questions very well phrased. It is refreshing to hear an interviewer refrain from imposing their own view of the world in order for the subject to express freely their take on the issues. Your habit of asking the less obvious question and leaving room for honest answers extracts some real gems. Keep up the great work!
August 27th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
This was a great interview. The subject was riveting and the two of you definitely have a good rapport together. Barry is a very slick interview guest — I imagine he's done this before. But the most important ingredient, it seems, is passion, and he definitely has that.
More like this!
August 27th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Agreed, very good interview. I was pretty impressed by his willingness to share information.
On the first point in the 'Suggested comments', I still am convinced that Obama simply rode the waves of change really well. In a sense, due to the frustrations from the Bush administration, people were ready for change, not something we see in every election.
But hey, I'm an Aussie, so don't take my word for it. Though I must say, this is the first time i've seen Obama sauce selling at local chips stores, so obviously his web/new media presence was phenomenally orchestrated and spread.
August 28th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
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August 29th, 2009 at 7:39 am
How we can let our fans take over the community on WordPress ? Any ideas ?
August 31st, 2009 at 8:53 pm
- I was worried that the vision of Barack might get in the way of ideas
here. Thanks. I'll do some (but not a lot) of political interviews in the
future. Your point is a good one to keep in mind.
- Paola has been doing an awesome job. I'm about to give her a bunch of
videos that need a lot of work. Glad she can handle it.
- Social media really can be thought of as an EcoSystem.
August 31st, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Michael, I need to do a whole interview around that, but I don't know who to
interview.
There are a lot of us who use WordPress to publish, but it (and all blogs)
is too much like a call and respond environment. The blogger talks and the
commenters respond — but they can't really talk to each other.
Even disqus and Intense Debate don't do much to solve this.
We need a way to let commenters talk to each other and start conversations
and have the blog itself only shape the conversation — but not take it
over.
BuddyPress is supposed to do that, but right now it just looks like a
Facebook-wannabe. And no one wants to join another Facebook. (If I'm wrong
about this — and I really hope I am — I hope someone corrects me.)
Bottomline: I love your questions. I'll see if I can think of someone to
invite on here to talk about it.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
The local convenience store sells Obama water bottles. ;-)
August 31st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Wow, thanks Scott!
August 31st, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Thanks. One of my goals with this interview is to keep my politics out of
this completely.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:03 pm
So I found a way to transcribe my interviews using Mechanical Turk for $30 -
$40 per interview. But the work afterwards to clean it up drove me nuts.
I'll keep looking Steve. Glad you told me.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
So I found a way to transcribe my interviews using Mechanical Turk for $30 -
$40 per interview. But the work afterwards to clean it up drove me nuts.
I'll keep looking Steve. Glad you told me.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:05 am
This interview confirmed that Obama's campaign success was no accident. The whole notion of community (or tribes, as Seth Godin speaks of) was in full force during the campaign. This was a very insightful interview though, and I'm definitely going to check out the book now.
February 3rd, 2010 at 12:05 pm
This interview confirmed that Obama's campaign success was no accident. The whole notion of community (or tribes, as Seth Godin speaks of) was in full force during the campaign. This was a very insightful interview though, and I'm definitely going to check out the book now.